Aliens responsible for Italian machine uprising

RoTM Italian authorities have confirmed what we at the neoLuddite Resistance Army (NRA) have known all along - that the 2004 machine uprising in the Italian village of Canneto di Caronia was probably caused by aliens.

For three weeks, locals battled against spontaneously-combusting TVs, fridges, cookers and mobile phones which damaged twelve houses and provoked a full-scale evacuation of the hamlet. The village's mayor, Pedro Spinnato, said: "This all began three weeks ago and we can discover no explanation. We cannot risk a tragedy through these fires so I have no other option to evacuate.

"We have had engineers in to examine cables and wires but they can find nothing wrong. Twelve houses have been severely damaged after various domestic appliances burst into flames."

Subsequent investigation led the then head of Sicily's Civil Protection Agency, Tullio Martella, to offer: "The cause of the fires seems to have been static electric charges. What we don't understand is why there were these static electric charges. It is not certain that the fires are finished forever. They were episodic to begin with."

The villagers were having none of it, and fingered Satanic influence for the terror. Nino Pezzino, a 43-year-old insurance salesman, said: "I'm Catholic. I believe in the Devil. I don't know why the Devil is here. If it happens again, I'm bringing in the exorcist."

Pezzino further declared he wouldn't stop at exorcism to purge his village of the malelovence. He continued: "If we're going to do it, we have to do it right. In order to do it, you need a sacrifice for the immortal gods, like a black goat or a black sheep. You have to dig a hole into the ground, because this is serious."

What he should have done, however, was dust off his pulse plasma rifle, because after a £1m probe conducted by dozens of experts and even someone from NASA, the powers that be have decided the fires were provoked by "high power electro magnetic emissions which were not man made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts".

The report - leaked in various Italian newspapers - also details a possible UFO landing close to the village, elaborating that "burnt imprints which have not been explained were found in a field".

Francesco Mantegna Venerando, Sicily's current Civil Protection chief who coordinated the report, cautioned: "This is not the final report. We are still working on our conclusions and this has been leaked. We are not saying that little green men from Mars started the fires, but that unnatural forces capable of creating a large amount of electromagnetic energy were responsible.

"This is just one possibility we are also looking at another one which involves the testing of top secret weapons by an unknown power which are also capable of producing an enormous amount of energy."